‘If you’re interested in old graveyards, you’d like those in Perthshire, where I hail from,’ he said. ‘Near Pitlochry, there’s a churchyard where some of the graves were protected by mortsafes – a kind of iron cage over the grave, to prevent body snatching. A pernicious activity, which we Scots were particularly good at, it seems.’

Cooper looked at him in surprise. ‘Body snatching? Yes, a particularly unpleasant crime.’

‘Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m surprised to find myself putting you right on a matter of law, Detective Constable.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘Body snatching wasn’t an offence. Once you were deceased, your physical remains couldn’t be owned by anyone, and therefore couldn’t be stolen. A body snatcher was only committing a crime if he stole other items with the body, even the shroud. It was popular opinion that turned against the resurrection men, not the law.’

‘But Burke and Hare …?’

‘A different case altogether. They weren’t content to wait for a supply of dead bodies to become available, so they decided to procure their own from among the living. Murder was their crime. It was all a question of market forces at work. The demand for bodies for dissection was enormous.’

‘There are probably other reasons people might want to obtain a dead body,’ said Cooper.

‘Undoubtedly.’

Robertson followed Cooper’s gaze as he looked around the graves in the churchyard.

‘Oh, there are no records of body snatching taking place in Derbyshire,’ he said. ‘People feared it, nevertheless. They had a superstitious dread of the body being removed from its last resting place. It meant they wouldn’t be able to rise from the grave on Judgement Day.’

‘So I believe.’

Robertson glanced up at him. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have called it superstition. I don’t want to be offensive.’

It sounded almost like an apology. Cooper waved it away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

The professor straightened up with a sigh. ‘Nobody can be sure when society developed its distaste for death. But for centuries it’s been kept out of sight. Few people ever see the process of decomposition now. Only those whose profession is death have that privilege.’

‘Pathologists, funeral directors?’ said Cooper. ‘Police officers?’

‘All our good friends,’ agreed Robertson. ‘God bless them.’

Cooper looked at Fry, and knew it was time to leave. Dusk was falling, and the churchyard was filling up with shadows. They softened the edges of the tombs, obscured the inscriptions, and made the stone slabs look a little less cold. Too much daylight didn’t suit the dead.

‘The “flesh eater”, Professor,’ he said. ‘What did the Greeks mean by that name?’

‘Well, the original phrase was lithos sarkophagos: “flesh-eating stone”. It reflected a belief that a certain type of limestone consumed the flesh from the body, and was therefore the perfect material to be used as a receptacle for the dead.’